It’s not uncommon on a Saturday night at 10-11PM to see a public school bus from the other end of the state on the interstate. Or see a school bus of ours out at midnight on a Wednesday with 3-4 students on board.

The thread about government waste got me to thinking about this huge waste of money. And it’s taxpayer money. Our schools already have massive spending problems on top of the rest of their issues.

Should taxpayers be on the hook for this? Or should the parents fund it?

My taxes already pay for the schools, why should I pay for that, too?

I don't think taxpayers should be on the hook for public schools, period. My kids are homeschooled, yet 80+% of my property taxes are getting dumped into our public school system that my kids will never attend. Its basically theft.

Realistically though, I know these things aren't going away. Extracurriculars are something that I think ideally ought to be funded by either the parents directly or by outside donations. On the other hand, at least these things provide benefit to the kids directly. There are a lot of things that the schools waste more money on that don't. So if the school isn't spending your tax dollars on this stuff, they'll just redirect it to something worse.

I don’t even have any kids and I get to pay…

IMHO The bloated Federal Bureaucracy Pales in comparison to the National Education / Schools and Infrastructure Spending.

Federal, State, County, City and Town Spending on Schools and Infrastructure must be tremendous. It’s the liberal left version of Mob Dominance in Unions.


I work across the street from some sort of Special Education location. The dozens of short buses and personal cars that ferry 1-3 students each is surprising. They’re met by 6 “Teachers” and escorted into the buildings.

The personal vehicles have signs and are contracted driving positions of some sort.

No.

Around me, the football play areas look like NFL stadiums, massive led billboards, chartered buses. Someone told me that booster clubs pay for it, I doubt it. I should only pay for schooling if I have kids there.

I am fed up with all the waste, the more I look at retirement (and what I pay in taxes) the more I get fed up. I’ve been paying taxes on my wages for the last 41 years and will never get back what I paid into SS. We pay in and others waste it.

My son’s swim team did fundraising and parents chipped in to pay for team transportation to the out of area meets and pay for the two nights in a hotel for the state championships. We learned pretty quick, the school took the money the team raised and used it for other purposes. The next two times they went to States, we kept didn’t turn in the find raising money and hired better buses and got rooms directly. That was the big public high school.

At the public collegiate high school may kids attend/attended, we have paid for every for every field trip, senior trip, Model UN trip, etc. or kids have gone on.

I don’t know how it works elsewhere, but I wouldn’t assume that because you see a school bus at an odd time the taxpayers are paying for it.

Did you pay mileage? Who paid for the wear and tear on the equipment? Who paid for the drivers time?

If the current system wasn't hopelessly corrupt:

Taxpayers should pay for education (i.e. reading, writing, arithmatic, the school building, staff salaries, and similar). THE END.

Parents should pay for entertainment which should include school trips, sports, stadiums for sports, band, debate, theater, clubs, travel for aforementioned, uniforms for aforementioned, and other similar entertainment activities. A couple years back, the local teachers were all crying because my county's voters overwhelmingly declined their teacher's union supported property tax increase which included astroturf for football stadiums, a natatorium (i.e. stadium for swimming), enough nonspecific IT money to buy 6 Cray supercomputers, and other ridiculous nonsense.

Since the current system is hopelessly corrupt and the dirty ass commies long ago took over the national teachers unions, gov't should shut down the public schools and switch to private establishments.

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Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Did you pay mileage? Who paid for the wear and tear on the equipment? Who paid for the drivers time?

Since not all kids on the swim team make it to states, the one year, we rented a couple of vans that the coaches drove. The other two years, the kids were divided among the coaches vehicles. For regions, we paid a charter bus company and they provided the driver. The first year, we gave the school the money, they rented a school bus with driver, and spent the substantial leftover money elsewhere.

The Model UN trip to NYC was $600 including airfare, hotel, and entrance fees for the conference and a couple museums.

I don’t really get what you are asking. The taxpayers via the school district aren’t paying for transportation for my kids’ extracurriculars. I’m not 100% sure about the Senior Night at Universal Studios, but we paid $100 for my son to go which was the bus there and back (2 hours each way) and the ticket to get in. For 60 kids, it seems about right for the ticket and bus ride.

quote:

Originally posted by PR64:
I don’t even have any kids and I get to pay…

The reply is to point out that you do benefit. I’m sure you wouldn’t object to the firemen that saved your place from burning or the medics that treated you for smoke inhalation. All of them benefited from the public school system.

I went on a school trip to a tech school. One student wanted to see welding and two members of the class showed him the basics. Then turned him loose.
A couple of years later he was welding in Indiana and was being paid are large sum of money.
We supported another student to enrolling an electrician apprenticeship. Classes were on weekends then salary during the summer. I was told later that the program saw how the teachers supported him and that was the deciding factor. All this was paid for by the taxpayer.

quote:

Originally posted by PR64:
I don’t even have any kids and I get to pay…

The question is specifically about school trips, not the schools in general. I’ll bet you have no clue if you are paying any at all for school trips.

I’m assuming school trips are field trips, sports team transportation, trips related to extra curricular activities like Math Olympics, Academic Decathlon, Model UN, Debate Team, etc.

A school’s purpose is to educate the students and a field trip once in a while seems fair. We paid around $8k a year for each of our three kids to go to a private Christian school from kindergarten through 8th grade. Hence we were able to afford a meal at Cracker Barrel once in a while. I know who paid for the field trips, drove, paid for the vehicles, the gas, etc.

My kids are going/went to a public high school. For the most part, I know who’s paying for those trips as well. It isn’t the taxpayers as whole. It’s this taxpayer, pointing at myself, right here at least in our district and I can’t imagine we are the only district in the country that operates this way.

Long, long ago I raised the question of why I should pay for schools when I didn’t have children in school. The obvious answer was that we all benefit from an educated citizenry. If anything, the abysmal actual state of education is only a feeble example of how bad it could be. And saying that every family (or fragment thereof) should educate its own children is just fantasy. I cannot claim to have any good idea of how to fix the education system other than meaningless platitudes like make parents more responsible, but calling to eliminate it entirely is like saying the way to end war is to “outlaw” it and get rid of our armed forces.

I do agree, though, that based on my very limited knowledge of what happens in our public schools there are many things we the taxpayers should not be paying for. As I recall, our local, no-longer-well-funded* high school paid $30,000 to put on a play (“Annie,” “Little Shop of Horrors”? no longer sure), including the license. How that sort of thing can be justified, and especially year after year, is beyond me.

As for trips, that is another thing that depends on their purpose and whether that contributes in meaningful ways to actual education. But of course then that depends on personal opinions. I would have no objection to trips to a debate meet, for example, but despite Wellington’s comment about “the playing fields of Eaton,” I’m less enamored with sending children all over the state to play children’s games at my expense.

* It used to be the best-funded school system in the state because of the contributions from the local molybdenum mining operation.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
No.

Around me, the football play areas look like NFL stadiums, massive led billboards, chartered buses. Someone told me that booster clubs pay for it, I doubt it. I should only pay for schooling if I have kids there.

I wouldn’t doubt football pays for itself in some cases. My old high school sold 6 skyboxes for $750,000 each to pay for renovations to the stadium. The locker room was featured in Sport Illustrated Online or some such. The school paid around $300,000 for badly needed repairs and private donations of an additional $350,000 covered making the locker rooms nice. The football field was the first non-pro sports field in the state to have astroturf installed.

My mistake, it was the basketball locker rooms, not the football ones:
Wisconsin high school unveils $662,000 locker room renovations

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
[QUOTE]

I don’t really get what you are asking. The taxpayers via the school district

If publicly owned equipment is being used, yes the taxpayers are on the hook for it. It is paid for by budget (taxpayer) money. It’s not a hard lift to see what’s being discussed here.

Renting vans and using volunteers (unless the coaches are being supplemented with taxpayer funds as part of salary) doesn’t fall in the taxpayer burden.

Student activities (such as sports) should not be taxpayer funded. And district buses shouldn’t be used. Period. If a school had $350,000 in donations, perhaps they should have prioritized it and took $350,000 less taxpayer money to cover “rising expenses”. I’m quite sure that didn’t happen.

Chartering a school bus and driver with the parents’ money is not on the taxpayers.

Coaches are getting paid to coach by the taxpayers here.

quote:

If a school had $350,000 in donations, perhaps they should have prioritized it and took $350,000 less taxpayer money to cover “rising expenses”. I’m quite sure that didn’t happen.

People that donate for specific things expect their money to go to those things. That’s how that works. Like the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Imagine what would have happened if UofM had spent the first few million he donated however they wanted. You think the next couple hundred million would have followed?

I’m thinking of donating money for bathrooms at the USF Geology Field
Camp in Idaho. They’ll be Trapper’s Crappers and I’d be pissed if USF spent the money on something else.

WTF, I was typing a post and then all the text suddenly disappeared. Anyway the gist: 1) broad (it takes a village) funding (ie - property taxes) should cover some minimal amount (some percentage (say, 40%) of whatever the income stream is today) and the rest should be covered by household with a child benefiting from public schools (ie - 1x for 1 child, 2x for 2 children, etc). Allowances for low income households. People benefitting should be more vested than those not benefitting. 2) funding only for education and perhaps some basic facilities (ie - look at schools in Asia) like basic multi-use fields; not 'professional class' stadiums and shit. 3) dissolve unions and wages top to bottom are tied to merit; and like private industry, the bottom 10% performers are cut every year. 4) any money from a household gets spent only on the local school district.

My kids went to public high school and I'm pretty sure none of their expenses for sports and/or after school activities were paid for with funds out of the school's budget. They went to different high schools, but I'm pretty sure all the high schools in this area (3 school districts) operate the same.

My daughter was on the school golf team and track team. Parents paid for all uniforms and did all the transportation for meets and matches.
Expenses for the golf team such as course fees for practice were covered by parents who belonged to the country club or the club itself (community involvement). Travel to meets were provided by parents...no golf team would be caught taking a school bus. All equipment was paid for by parents.
Expenses for the track team were covered by fund raisers. Parents paid for equipment and provided transportation

There is no doubt in my mind that her participating in these activates played a large part in her being accepted into the college of her choice.

My son was a member of the Animation Club and had use of all the club equipment. All expenses and equipment replacement was paid for by their filming the graduations of all the area high schools (which each paid a fee) and selling CD's to families. Family provided all needed transportation.

His participation in this club played a major role in his being accepted into CalArts...as well as scholarship offers from other Art Colleges.

Only having a great grade point average won't get you into great colleges. Colleges look at a high school diploma without community service and other organized activities as almost like a participation award

quote:

Originally posted by PR64:
I don’t even have any kids and I get to pay…

ditto,


and when I was a wee tyke, we went to private school from 3rd thru 8th grade, due to bussing,


however, in private school, and high school (public) we did field trips, sometimes in a school bus, sometimes in a hired coach,

cannot remember if my parents had to chip in for such trips, but there was always a full bus, and educational,